


I Wove My Webs for You

by Perpetual Motion (perpetfic)



Category: Life
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 03:13:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/534856
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perpetfic/pseuds/Perpetual%20Motion
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-ep for "Did You Feel That?". (The earthquake episode where Ted's hand meets a pencil.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Wove My Webs for You

“You could have told me you took a pencil through the hand.”

 

“It’s fine, Charlie.” Ted tries to pull away his hand, but Charlie crowds right up next to him. “ Okay, this is—”

“I would have come,” Charlie says quietly, and the words are warm air against Ted’s neck. 

“You were busy. I’m a big boy. I can handle a few scrapes and bruises.”

“Pencil through the hand.” Charlie turns over Ted’s hand. “Can you see through it?”

“Can’t say I thought to look.”

“Suppose not.” Charlie pulls Ted’s hand to his mouth and kisses the bandage. He looks up when Ted goes stiff. “You okay?”

“What are you…the hell?”

“Kiss and make it better,” Charlie mumbles, and he can’t quite look Ted in the eyes. “Just thought—”

“You invited me to live here,” Ted says quietly. “You said I could stay here and handle your money, and then you said I could have any bedroom I wanted.”

“I remember.”

“Do you?” Ted’s voice raises just a fraction. “Because I also remember needing to vomit on the front lawn because I realized you wanted me to come and stay but not come and stay.” He stares hard at Charlie. “And I came anyway.”

“I know.”

“You don’t.” Ted untangles his hand from Charlie’s and walks around the kitchen island. “You don’t know at all. I wake up, I do your books, I make calls, and I run out on your errands. And, occasionally, your ex-wife shows up to drop off a goddamned horse, Charlie.” Ted points when Charlie smiles a little. “It’s not funny. I’m living in your fucking house, cooking your fucking food, and answering your fucking door to see your ex-wife holding a fucking horse.”

“And who did you call to come and help with that?” Charlie’s voice is even, but there’s plenty of frustration and anger in his eyes. 

“I called Olivia.” Ted breathes out hard at the way Charlie deflates. “I can’t be dependant on you saving me, Charlie. So I called a different redhead who I think wants to have sex with me.” Ted shakes his head. “Of course, I pick the one who’salso in a fucked up relationship.”

Charlie closes his eyes and breathes in. “Jennifer is—”

“No.” Ted cuts off. He waits for Charlie to open his eyes. “You want an uncluttered life, Charlie? Let me give you step one: don’t keep trying to fuck your ex-wife. She left you because she convinced herself you were guilty.”

“She—”

“She did,” and Ted’s voice drops down low again. “She did, Charlie.” Ted walks out of the kitchen, opens the patio doors, and steps onto the lawn. He listens to the humming of the pool and the sound of Charlie’s footfalls as he walks up behind him.

“What we had,” Charlie’s voice comes from somewhere behind Ted’s left shoulder. “I thought it was an inside thing. I didn’t know.”

“I knew a lot of guys in prison, Charlie. I liked a few of them. They’re all out, and I’m here.” Ted glances over his shoulder. Charlie’s staring at the horizon. “Not everything inside was terrible.”

“No,” Charlie’s smile is only on the left side of his mouth. “It wasn’t.” He steps up beside Ted and leans until their shoulders touch. “And you’re right about Jennifer.”

“I was a bad husband,” Ted answers. “I had a loving, caring wife, and she left me during the trial because she found out I’d cheated on her with, well, everyone who would let me. And I don’t blame her one bit. But you—god, Charlie—you kept hoping she’d believe you, and she never did.”

“She was a beautiful bride,” Charlie says after a pause. “We were happy.”

“And when the world crumbled, she left you in the rubble.”

“It’s hard to remember that sometimes.” Charlie leans into Ted a little bit more. “Maybe that’s why you’re here. To remind me.”

“I’m here because you asked.”

There’s a pause. Charlie shifts so that he’s almost falling against Ted’s side. He curls in when Ted slides an arm around him cautiously. “You don’t owe me anything, Ted. I just…I wanted you near me if you wanted to be near me.”

“I want to be near you,” Ted assures him. “It just gets…tiring…to watch you run after Jennifer, and…it hurts.”

“A flower falls, even though we love it,” Charlie says quietly, “and a weed grows, even though we do not love it.”

Ted thinks that over. “Is that your way of saying you’ve been kind of a dick?”

“It was more aimed towards what I need to accept about my relationship with Jennifer, but if it works, it works.”

“It works,” Ted agrees. He jumps a little when Charlie presses into his side, his nose tucked into Ted’s neck. “That wasn’t my way of saying I want to get laid.”

“I know.” Charlie curls in even closer and lays his head on Ted’s shoulder. “Do you remember the 2004 lockdown?”

“I remember you reading to me,” Ted says with a smile. “ _Charlotte’s Web_.”

“It’s a good book.”

“You have been my friend,” Ted recites. “That in itself is a tremendous thing.”

“I haven’t been a very good one lately.” Charlie pulls away to look Ted in the eyes. “I’m sorry.”

Ted smiles. “We’re still getting used to this.” He waves a hand to encompass the house, the lawn, and the general view. “We’ve got to mess up a little, I guess.” Ted holds up a finger. “Don’t Zen that.”

Charlie presses his lips together for a moment. “I might have, in my head.”

“As long as I don’t have to hear it.”

“For now?”

Ted chuckles. “Just for now.”

“Okay.” Charlie pushes against Ted until Ted steps back and ends up leaning against the wall. “Can I kiss you now?”

“What?”

“Can I kiss you now?” Charlie’s eyes are focused on Ted’s mouth. “I’d really like to kiss you now.”

“Why haven’t you kissed me before?” Ted turns his head when Charlie leans in. He closes his eyes when Charlie’s mouth brushes his jaw line. “You have to answer me first.”

“I was scared,” Charlie admits. “I want an uncluttered life, Ted. I’m trying for it, and I wasn’t sure that you’d be okay with that.”

“I wouldn’t mind a couch.”

“We have a couch.”

“No, we have a loveseat and an armchair, and they both look like something from a smoking lodge.”

Charlie grins. “Okay. Fine. A couch. What color?”

“Lime green.”

“Okay. We’ll get a lime green couch.”

Ted chuckles. “Okay.”

“Now can I kiss you?”

“Yes.” Ted smiles.

Charlie kisses him slowly, tongue pressing into his bottom lip. Ted sighs into it, his good hand sliding across Charlie’s neck to clutch at the nape. “Ted,” Charlie says against Ted’s mouth.

“I’m not—” Ted lets Charlie deepen the kiss. “ You’re sleeping—” Charlie grabs him by the belt and pulls him in tighter. “Alone, Charlie,” Ted gets out. “You’re sleeping—”

“I’ll sleep alone,” Charlie agrees. “All night, and all tomorrow night, and the next night too. I just really, really want to make out with you right now.”

“And this is why we need a couch.” Ted groans when Charlie pulls away. “Where the hell are you going?”

“To buy a couch.”

It takes a few seconds for Ted to realize Charlie is completely and totally serious. “Hey! Get back here!”

“Have to buy a couch!” Charlie pokes his head out of the doorway and raises his eyebrows at Ted. “You coming?”

“I was hoping…” Ted grumbles, but he grins when Charlie pulls him into the house by his shirt. “We could just go upstairs.”

“There’s not a couch upstairs.”

Ted rolls his eyes. Charlie is officially committed to the couch idea. “You’re crazy, you know.”

“What?” Charlie pats himself down for his keys. “I want a couch. So we can make out. And maybe have sex. You know, if it goes that far.”

Ted catches the mischief in Charlie’s eyes. “Fine. I’ll stay with you tonight. But that’s on the condition that we get a couch tomorrow.”

“Lime green?”

Ted shakes his head. “Fine. Sure. But, _tomorrow_.”

“All right.” Charlie drops his keys on the counter and advances on Ted. He kisses him again. “So, sex?”

“Why not?” Ted says with a laugh. “Like I’m going to say no.”

Charlie pulls away instantly. “If you don’t—”

“Charlie?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

“Ted, if you—”

“I’m here because I want to be here, Charlie. I’m here because it’s you, and it’s me, and there’s nothing else out here in the open that makes much sense to me.” Ted holds Charlie’s head between his hands. “That’s about as uncluttered as it gets.”

“Okay,” Charlie says after a minute. “Okay.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [I Wove My Webs For You [Podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1835938) by [InkSound (BearHatter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BearHatter/pseuds/InkSound)




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